FitnessProsBooks.com - The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

	List Price: $29.95 Our Price: $14.00 Your Save: $ 15.95 ( 53% ) Availability: Manufacturer: Sounds True, Incorporated
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Binding: Audio Cassette Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3444 EAN: 9781564559289 Format: Unabridged ISBN: 1564559289 Label: Sounds True, Incorporated Manufacturer: Sounds True, Incorporated Number Of Items: 4 Publication Date: 2002-01-01 Publisher: Sounds True, Incorporated Studio: Sounds True, Incorporated
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Don't be scared to read or listen to it Comment: In a nutshell, if you don't want to bring awareness to the places in yourself you avoid and would rather not deal with awakening, do not listen to or read this book. If you are interested in a brilliantly written perspective on compassionate spiritual awakening, then by all means get it and listen or read it over and over. We are so blessed to live in a time where we have teachers like Pema Chodron to give us instruction on how to bring awareness to our habitual thinking that keep us stuck. Yes, it can be frightening to look within with such scrutiny, but Pema reminds us that we can intend to begin our inquiry from a compassionate and accepting place.Self condemnation for what we find in ourselves is a trap and another mental agonizer. I have seemed to be addicted to drama and unhappiness all my life. I have been on a spiritual and personal growth path for 20 years. The longer I live the more I realize that my own thinking keeps driving me to dead ends of pain and suffering. I am at a point where the only thing left to do is surrender my mind as best as I can. Thankfully, I have teachers like Pema to light the way a bit for me. Customer Rating: Summary: impossible Comment: There is something repellant, even repulsive, about the religious mind. We cannot escape the world, however much we dislike it: it is a violent, often ugly place, dominated by the stupid; and however far we flee from it, these unpleasantries inevitably find us out, we cannot run far enough or fast enough. Show me your attachment to the beautiful and the good, indeed, show me your love of peace, and I will show you beauty adulterated and good compromised; and I will expose your peace as a forgery that hides your hatred of life. The religious mind, when it perceives this contradictory and chaotic quality of existence, sees in it an opportunity to perform a trick of ethical magic. If one is good, if one is clarified, if one is just in every action, if one will only turn the other cheek, behold, nothing will ever die, pain will cease, and the horrible will be rectified. Alas, good friends, the truth is quite otherwise: he who turns his cheek is beaten and crucified. And he who cries for justice, will weep in earnest by way of reckoning. It is the weak who fear the strong; it is the good who inspire in others evil. In this world one either eats or is eaten, and no amount of sympathy, pity, or compassion will adulterate the predatory core of being itself. And books like this are authored by charlatains, who try to take away your fear by denying the necessity for it. I give you two instances of this religious magic: Ms. Chodron informs us of an elderly couple living in a gated community in Florida. They fear the violence resulting from poverty of circumstances surrounding them. Ms. Chodron implies that it is the elders who are at fault for the fear they experience, that they must open their arms to the terror around them, that they must become as nothing and embrace the thing they fear. What do they fear? Besides murder? The loss of their culture. The compromise of the quality of their life. Ms. Chodron does not seem to comprehend that pistol shots are exchanged on the freeways in southern Florida; that interracial violence and cross-cultural warfare has come to visit us in our homeland, and that southern Florida is one of its battlegrounds--and even if she does, she has no answer for it, except to say, we should submit to it. Peace is submission. I say that piety like this is suicide: piety does not, can not, will not, nor ever shall bring us peace, except the peace of the grave. She likewise quotes with great approval Einstein, who faults us all for our consciousness--which, he describes as cut off, selfish, lacking understanding, and unwilling to embrace "the whole of nature". Einstein, good folk, was paid handsomely for his consultations on the development of Atomic Weapons. So much for embracing the "whole of nature" and its fundamental goodness. Saint Einstein, and his good work, the annihilation of millions, and the development of weapons with which his employers can further dominate our lives. So much for Ms. Chodron. She is either stupid or malicious, neither of which is very good for you. tlt Customer Rating: Summary: Calming, inspiring reminder... Comment: I love listening to this tape. I put it on and start it over again when it is done. I find it totally inspiring to listen to the writing of this wise Buddhist monk. My only criticism is that the woman who reads the book (beautiful voice, by the way). She pronounces the word "strength" omitting the 'g' sound. This was horribly annoying to me. I grew up pronouncing the 'g' and it sounds prissy and pompous to omit the 'g' sound. Customer Rating: Summary: Wonderful Book Comment: I loved this book -- it's practical and prescriptive. I applied her advice into both my personal and professional life. Next steps -- I will read her entire collection. Customer Rating: Summary: An insightful book Comment: Pema Chrodon's work is, as always is an insightful read about human nature and emotions and how we come to term with those emotions. I found the focus on the bodhichitta and the different sayings fascinating as well as enjoying further revelations about Buddhist beliefs and spirituality. All of what she writes is applicable to living life and facing the fears any of us could face. The only reason this is a four instead of a five is because you can find a lot of what she writes in here, in her other works. It still makes for good reading, but reading one of her works seems to get to heart of all of her writing. More Reviews
Editorial Reviews: We always have a choice, Pema Chodron teaches: We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us and make us resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder. In The Places That Scare You, this beloved Tibetan Buddhist nun and bestselling author provides the tools to deal with them – the practical means to cultivate an awakened, compassionate ability to open our hearts and minds to our own suffering and that of others. Shambhala Lion Editions. Unabridged book on tape read by Tami Simon.